


One of Me, One of You

by thermochromatic



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Borrowers Style, Gen, Small Titans, SnK Kink Meme Prompt, little people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 10:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1979604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thermochromatic/pseuds/thermochromatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being one of the 'little people' had never been Levi's cup of tea. Then again, this probably wasn't either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of Me, One of You

**Author's Note:**

> A fill I started for the SNK Kink Meme. It went an odd direction though, first time really writing Levi. 
> 
> Prompt: Humanity's tiniest titan shifter. Levi is actually in titan form 24/7; when he turns back into a human, he is only the size of a thumb. Nobody knows except for Hanji, who thinks it's the funniest thing ever.

Being one of the ‘Little People’ had never been Levi’s cup of tea. Cleaning house, tidying for the humans, while their larger cousins ran amok, gobbling down anyone with a beating heart and a stupid expression like it was going out of style?

Fuck that.

Being a titan wasn’t about choking down as many idiots as possible only to puke them all back up. The mess was pointless, and the stench was even worse, and Levi pinched the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. It wasn’t about wiping up after assclowns that couldn’t manage to put a button back in the right box, sweep up that little bit of leftover flour either, but he’d take it over a mindless, open-mouth rampage.

He hated their mouths.

He hated _them_.

“Dumb, lumbering fuckwits,” he muttered.

They couldn’t even put together a form that wasn’t a misshapen horror, disgusting and disproportionate in more ways than he’d ever cared to count, let alone clue in long enough to shut the hole in their face.

“ _Disgusting_.”

“Oh, oh! What’s _disgusting_?”

Levi rolled his eyes, biting back a sigh, his peace interrupted as per usual. “Go away, shitty glasses.”

Hanji’s shoulder bumped into his and Levi huffed, slapping her hands away when she reached for his face as he stepped away.

“Idiot, get your filthy hands away from me.”

“But Levi,” she whined, reaching again.

“Fuck you. You’re going to burn yourself.”

“I know.” She grinned, leaning in closer and his nose wrinkled. “But it’s so hard not to touch you, Levi. Your temperature completely aside, your skin feels different, your hair has a different texture than any of the others, you’re—!”

He slapped a book over her mouth, unwilling to get his hands, gloved or not, near the gaping hole spewing such garbage from her face. “Shut up. Fuck. Someone’s going to hear you.”

She swatted the book aside, giving him a sheepish smile before hurrying forward again. “Come to the lab.”

“No.” Levi turned and stepped down the hall, quick to put some space between them, though not as much as he’d like.

“Please, Levi!”

“No.”

“But—“

“No.”

“Hey, you didn’t—“

“Do your ears need cleaning? I’m not going to your mold riddled trash receptacle, shitty four-eyes. Give it up.”

“Well, you could clean it. That’s what you guys do, right?”

Levi’s fingers curled into fists at her amusement – the _teasing_ – and he ignored her snorting laughter. “Fuck you.”

“If you’d like! I’m sure we could discover something any way you’d like, Levi! Oh, maybe—”

A low growl, animalistic and somehow unclean rumbled in his chest, and Levi skirted around a corner, picking up his pace, as his lips curled in disgust and he swallowed the rest of the ugly sound.

No wonder they ate humans. Fucking brats, all of them, irritating and loud and confusing and disgusting.

He needed another bath, a cup of water to rinse off in, and as he ducked into his rooms, door slammed shut, dead bolt slid home, he felt his shoulders slump when the sound of her footsteps dimmed behind the door.

He stepped away when she knocked, ignoring it as best he could as he dropped a washcloth on the table then deposited his gear at his bedside.

He’d been tall once, the tallest of his kind, towering over the rest of them in either form. It hadn’t been an ideal life, picking and stealing from the oafs that never noticed them – scraps here and there, food from cupboards, a bit of cloth.

It hadn’t been much, but it’d been home. It’d been with them.

He shook his head at the thought and ripped off his gloves.

Now wasn’t the time for that. _Now_ he’d been reduced to ‘shrimp’, ‘short-stack’, ‘tiny’, ‘ _precious’_ …

And of course, his favorite, ‘Humanity’s Strongest’.

“Fucking bullshit,” he snapped.

They were blind, oblivious.

He tossed his cravat aside only to hurry over and snatch it back off the floor the second it landed, batting off dust that wasn’t there, before smoothing any excess wrinkles. He folded it neatly, following suit with the rest of his clothing before he filled his usual cup – a small white thing with low edges and a complimentary saucer – with boiling water before he settled a towel over the wood and crawled onto it.

Unlike that shitty Jeager brat’s transformation, his own was smooth, simple, with little more than a puff of steam before he was padding across the table, then swinging himself up onto the rim of the cup. He wandered around the edge to the vase situated on the other side and tugged a petal off one of the roses – pink, highly scented, fresher than the others – and dropped it into the water. Another followed quickly and he toed them both down, under the steam with a sigh when the scent rose, potent and clean.

“One of the little people,” he sniffed, disdain and irritation making him huff as he slid into the water. He shot a cutting glance at the door and the pest lingering on the other side, resisting the urge to shout at her. It wasn’t worth it, high pitched to her gigantic ears, and though he was loath to admit it, squeaky on the best of days.

Still, he could hear her shuffling out there, the hushed urgency of her whispers for him to let her in – just one look! Just one experiment! Just one, just one! – and he grumbled a string of curses under his breath, staring down at the water.

“Levi, please?”

He ignored her, dipping his head below the steam to swim around the cup. His fingers brushed against the bottom, tracing over the pink flowers that decorated the bottom, and for a moment he could almost smell them – sweet but light, fresh and free.

—stupid.

He couldn’t smell anything under the water, couldn’t hear anything, and he closed his eyes, briefly appreciating the loss of everything but heat.  

It was no wonder they got eaten – stupid, disgusting wastes of air. They were loud, they fought amongst each other and left nothing for anyone else sharing their world. They were greedy and self-centered.

They deserved their cage.

Yet, when he poked his head back up to little more than the drip of water from his hair, Levi found that thought unsettling, twisting in his gut and leaving him shivering even in the scalding water.

_Not all of them,_ he thought, leaning against the porcelain.

Not all of them deserved such a cage.

He’d changed since coming here, since choosing to retain such a form to satisfy first a curiosity, then a promise he hadn’t intended to make.

The silence no longer sat well with him.

The day wasn’t complete without noise, without a mess.

There were more voices, more places, less room but somehow more.

He wasn’t just one of the ‘little people’ anymore. Somehow, slowly… he’d become one of them too.


End file.
